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In the early 2000s, e-commerce in Brazil experienced an astronomical expansion: several people saw the new business modality as the new “Eldorado”. And it was thanks to the exponential growth of online retailing, which for a long time sustained relatively fast ROI promises, that many Brazilian entrepreneurs decided to bet on the great moment of virtual stores as a shortcut to success.

In this way, thousands of e-commerces emerged, fueling competition at predatory levels and forcing shopkeepers to face an uncomfortable price war, which occurred in the offer of free shipping, discounts and more “comrades” installments, for example. There were cases, even, of virtual stores that offered a comparison of prices of its competitors, to prove the status of “barateiro”.

This price war is very interesting from the point of view of the average consumer. After all, who does not like to pay cheaper? However, this strategy often means the ruin of many virtual stores precisely because it undermines the final profit margin and hence the financial health of the business.

But in an environment where competition is too aggressive, what to do? How can I maintain the sustainability of my prices without losing the attention of my consumer? It happens that, in e-commerce, the price war is just one of the resources of customer loyalty.

Now, as in this Red Ocean that online retailing has become, are there companies that have emerged and become benchmarks in the industries in which they operate? How did they take the lead role? The answer lies in building a strong brand.

The good old e-mail marketing is seen by some as old-fashioned, who consider him as the grandpa of digital marketing. Deprived of the popularity of social media and receiving much lower investments than sponsored links, email marketing is an injustice. The new generation ignores the glories of the one who had helped their parents sell over the internet since the late 1990s!

And you, a digital marketer or entrepreneur who uses the web to leverage your business, respond: Is your goal being to be a celebrity on the internet or just want it to drive you the results of your campaigns or your business?

If your answer was “results,” know that good old e-mail is one of the most effective forms of digital marketing, straight to the point, blunt and funny, and a small investment compared to other online media. If you have questions, they will be answered in this article.

Market penetration

E-mail is seen as something intrinsic to one’s own use of the internet. You’ve probably heard friends say they left or intend to quit some social network, but I doubt they heard a friend say they would abandon the use of the email.

Nor can we underestimate the scope of service. According to Exact Target surveys, currently 95% of online consumers use email, which represents more than 3 billion active accounts worldwide. Of this total of consumers with active accounts, 91% check their inbox at least once a day.

Reach

Speaking of social networks, let’s make a brief comparison between their reach and that of email marketing. To do this, we will take as a reference Facebook, by far the most used social network in the world.

Let’s say you have 10,000 followers on Facebook. He was excited about being able to speak directly to this considerable number of potential consumers, right? But in practice, things are very different. Out of this 10,000 people, your most popular posts will rarely reach 500 followers.

In the case of email, considering that approximately 4% of the messages are directed to the spam box and another 18% blocked or lost for some other reason (ReturnPath search data), you still have almost 80% of messages delivered. From there until the closing of the business, it all depends on your business and marketing approach.

Costs

Some people say that social media is free. In fact, free is just creating an account. Significant team investments, sponsored posts, and, not least, time are required to achieve effective results. The return on social media occurs at least in the medium term.

And what about the sponsored links in search engines? They represent direct costs from the first click, not to mention the need for experienced professionals to optimize investments.

That is why email marketing continues to be one of the cheapest forms of digital marketing.

Time to be pragmatic

With all this, we do not mean that the other forms of marketing mentioned in this article are not important. Through a consistent basis of emails, you can check: email marketing sells! Also according to Exact Target, for each R $ 1 invested, R $ 44.25 is the average return.

But when deciding your investments, you should be more pragmatic and evaluate the options based on the potential return of each of them.

E-commerce is definitely the new mode of global business because this format does not contain insurmountable logistical barriers, meaning customers can easily consumer any kind of product from any region of the planet, as long as the desire to consume more the price set be consistent with the buyer’s reality.

In another vision, for a virtual shopkeeper, hundreds of thousands were created in the future and in the future will be thousands of direct and indirect competitors. Due to there are numerous factors like taxes, subsidies, labor, exchange rate policy, among other factors. The simple competition of the price of the product ends with a shopkeeper because it directly undermines the final profit margin, which determines the health of most companies.

There are already virtual stores that are offering price comparison of their competitors directly within their own product page to show the best low price condition, this is a strategy for large mass consumers who are only concerned about the amount spent and not with purchase set.

It is very difficult for new and average virtual shopkeepers to win in this battle through low price because financial resources are often extremely limited and simply absorb additional costs like: freight, gifts, better deals with suppliers, better financial rates not always it’s possible.

However, these same great warriors of low prices to guarantee this strong competitive factor, carry out cost cuts in all areas, be it hiring unskilled labor, outsourcing service, eliminating processes. It is exactly at this point that a new shopkeeper can be supportive, seeking to offer a slightly higher and attractive price, coupled with a range of special services. Customers expect to pay fair prices for the product sales service.

Another tactic is to show customers their unique differences when negotiating with customers by encouraging them to share their experiences with the company. On the internet are offered hundreds of options, which will differentiate these options more and more, are the recommendations of people of known, who assist in the decision making to make a transaction in this sea of stores.

The low price is still the biggest factor during a decision of an online purchase, however this scenario is changing mainly aimed at aggregating services during a sale, from quick delivery, offering consulting, personalized service, troubleshooting solutions. The investment in virtual stores not focused on low price is a return that will occur from the maturation of Brazilian electronic commerce.

Discount coupons or married sales usually work to get rid of stalled stock. Putting a low-sale product on sale married to a sales champion can pay you off. But, the most important thing is to have planning. Try to understand how your audience behaves and invest in products that have good acceptance. This also prevents you from having a stock stopped for a long time.

Always make sure that the best-selling products are in good supply and that no merchandise is sold out for long. When a customer searches for something to buy and does not find, he ends up going to another store and this can cause problems for his e-commerce. A well-managed stock is a guarantee of success. Investing in E-RP software that controls the entry and exit of products can also be a good solution to always have control of your products.

Always keep the products well maintained and always check that they are in good condition. Sending a defective product to the customer besides being bad creates negative advertisement. Until you can fix the problem, it may already have reported the problem to friends or social networks and this can bring damage to your store. Therefore, basic storage and shipping of the product is essential.

Investing in a virtual store requires planning and, above all, beware of every step of the sale. A well-managed stock is certainly a guarantee of success for your business. It pays to pay attention to the small details and organize itself. You just have to win.

A pope of modern marketing, Philip Kotler postulates in his book Marketing for the 21st Century that “if customers only bought products and did not care about additional services and benefits and if all categories were the same, all companies would have to accept the price established by the market.
Of course, there are no such markets.

Companies are forced to ‘temper’ their offerings to customers in ways other than price. Companies that add value have already developed a stronger benefit package to gain customer preference by offering: customization, convenience, faster service, more and better services, guidance, training and consulting, an extraordinary guarantee, useful tools hardware and software, etc. “.

In other words, the customer does not only buy products, but benefits associated with a strong brand in which he feels confident.

But how to get there? Although each case is a case, there are some principles that can guide this journey. His first one would obviously be balancing marketing strategies. It is important for the entrepreneur to know the importance of last click media, but not to increase the funnel with demand generation strategies.

There is no more performance x branding. Everything is performance! The entire media strategy should be thought according to the consumer journey and attribution models.

Engagement and assertiveness are fundamental. To do this, you have to leave the most natural and fluid communication between all the channels and combine your media strategies with your presence in social networks.

Lovebrands stand out right by word of mouth, when an engaged and loyal consumer starts to advocate for their products and services. Moreover, approaching your client via social media means better understanding who your audience is, improving a relationship, and even solving problems through these media.

Think of your products not as an end, but as a means to reach the consumer. To consolidate, you need to show that your store is here to stay. You need to be a specialist and work with assortment and content. Specialized companies, for example, in the sale of certain articles are references precisely because they gather, in a single space, products that other stores do not have.

Finally, the service. Excellence in customer service is crucial to the consolidation of a brand, after all, the consumer wants to be well served, receive clear information and feel at ease when accessing your store.

Often this will make all the difference by justifying a relatively higher price, which he will pay without hesitation, knowing that it will be worth the investment.

In times when virtual stores are having to reduce their free-shipping and low-price offerings to justify their investment in the e-commerce boom of the past decade, their brand will be the way to differentiate companies that will survive in the coming years from those that will break and cause a tremendous headache for their owners. It’s no secret to anyone. Differentiation is vital in any market. And now it’s time for online retailers.

SAFETY – Preventing not to remedy, this old adage is all about when we talk about fraud in online shopping. Anyone who has an e-commerce, whether small or large, is susceptible to fraudsters looking for opportunities to make purchases using credit cards and stolen data.

The bad news is still that Brazil in 2014 was ranked fifth in the world ranking of credit card frauds, behind only the United States, Mexico, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom. And, not to further discourage e-merchants, the detriment of these fraudulent transactions is borne 100% by the online store.

This scenario confirms the importance of investing in anti-fraud solutions and preventing them from affecting profit at the end of the month. But do not despair, there are many ways to keep your e-commerce healthy. That’s why we’ve separated five tips that you should put into practice right now on your site to keep you safe. Check below:

Adopt Pay in One Click

Great powers of the global e-commerce, like Amazon, offer this option. The great advantage is that with the data storage, customers do not need to fill in each new purchase forms with personal information, including credit card details.

Ask for strong passwords

When you create your account, you require strong, complex passwords with numbers and characters. Inform that this measure is thinking of ensuring the security of your purchases and data. It may seem, at first, to the customer a bummer, but if well explained he will embark on that idea.

Tell about transactions

An option to avoid the dreaded chargeback, may be to notify the customer by email or SMS before finalizing the transaction. This means that after entering the card data the consumer will receive a message that he is about to finalize a purchase of value X, provide a code that he must complete to complete the sale.

Make a beta, ask the users what they found and keep an eye on the results.

Restrict the number of transactions denied

Often fraud is attempted by malicious software that uses different numbers of credit cards successively until the end of the purchase. One way to prevent these fraudulent sales from being carried out is to restrict the number of attempts that each user can report the wrong data on their credit card. If the consumer exceeds this number you can temporarily block your registration and put it on a risk list.

Have professional help

Most fraudsters have all the expertise to circumvent the systems. Hence, it is very difficult to avoid fraud and charge

backs on your site without the help of a specialized company.

In addition, trying to do this work on your own is going to take a lot of time and effort, the best option is to seek a qualified partner to help in this process and dedicate to sales, prospecting and loyalty of new e-consumers.

The strategy of selling in an e-commerce is a crucial factor in increasing sales and boosting your brand. Various shopping carts include a buyer registration system. This way, every time someone buys a product in your store, you can see data such as your name, email, phone, age and location, among others.

Shopping carts let you create statistics on how many products were purchased by a customer, the sales peaks, and which products were the best-selling in the week. With this information in mind, you can decide which customers can send you promotions or what are the best days to send emails with information about your e-commerce.

Trust the data:

Whether or not a person deals well with numbers, it is always important to have the latest data from your online store. Seeing the days or times when you have the most visitors to your site will allow you to understand the best time to publish new products or promotions.

Average purchase value statistics will help you set the standard price your customer expects. Negative data, such as the least viewed or commented products, will serve to make improvements and adjust your site to meet the expectations of your customers and help improve the brand.

The shopping cart management panel lets you see real-time visitors to your page, sales made during the last few months, and the sales overview with easy-to-understand graphics. That is, you do not have to be a finance expert to understand the behavior of your online store.

Offer more means of payment to your customers:

Payment facilitators provide you with an easy-to-install module in your chosen shopping cart. The digital entrepreneur will not need the technical knowledge to receive payments from customers in his virtual store.

Only a few data from your account will be required by your payment facilitator to integrate credit cards with multiple available flags and bank statements. Your customers will be able to pay securely and the shopping cart module will show the value of the sales made.

If you want to start selling online with a shopping cart, search for developer solutions and see the options that make it easy to create and manage your virtual store.

SALES – There are several options for an entrepreneur to create their e-commerce quickly and easily. These include pre-integrated shopping cart options to enable the creation of a complete product or service management system, store customer registration, get the most recent update on purchases made, and generate useful statistics to help the retailer to better understand their consumers.

In this article, we highlight what are the most important points to keep in mind when choosing between shopping cart options and how you can start selling instantly.

Manage your products efficiently:

One of the most important topics in choosing a shopping cart is the ability to add, sort and manage the products in your store very easily. To start an e-commerce, it is likely that your product stock does not exceed 50 references.

However, over time, this amount can increase significantly. Therefore, it is important to be able to classify your products or services by brand, color, size, reference function, etc. If you want to increase the chances that your products will be seen by the customer, you can sort so that the same product can appear in several categories simultaneously.

There are very popular shopping carts that allow you to aggregate the values of the products or services in a very simple way, besides the possibility of including descriptions, several images in the same product, define the shipping costs and classify them in one or more categories of your virtual store.

VAT is always the same as that in force in the country, but the rate applied by customs duties varies according to the type of goods, which is annually fixed by Community legislation. “The value taken into consideration for the calculation of customs duties is the so-called” customs value “, which normally includes the price actually paid for the purchase of the product (invoice) and transport and insurance costs to the place of customs clearance”, read on the website of the Tax and Customs Authority. Then the VAT is calculated based on this sum. You will still have to pay for the customs clearance process, which has an average cost of 10 euros.

To facilitate the calculations, before making a purchase on a site outside the EU go to the website of the Tax and Customs Authority , then click on the Customs Tariff section and then on “Nomenclature” and “import” to search for the tariff code (a EU product classification system containing import and export duty rates and other applicable protection measures).

If, for example, you buy a camcorder, you should put the word “camcorder” in the space that says “text” and click on the appropriate code for the product you are going to buy. There you will find the rates of duty applicable to Third Countries (TPT) and VAT applied to that product.

In the case of the camcorder, the customs fee is 5% and the VAT applied is 23%. Therefore, imagining that the machine cost 400 euros (including insurance and transport costs), when retained in customs can pay 20 euros of customs duties and will pay 97 euros of VAT (value of the order + customs duties * 23%) . The cost of the customs clearance process should also be added to this amount. In the end, will end up paying more about 120 euros, which may not compensate in relation to the price of the store in Portugal.

Managing a stock with intelligence is one of the essentials to ensure the success of a virtual store. It is not only in physical stores that planning and controlling the inventory of products is necessary. In an e-commerce this care is also critical. You need to invest smartly in the stock and be careful not to get stranded products. A well-managed stock is a guarantee of success for your business.

In order for your company to succeed, planning is an essential item. Do you really care about the products you have in stock? It is necessary to have a tight control of what goes out and what comes in and biweekly or monthly reports of how the products behave in the store. Keep an eye on those items that have the most exit and invest in them. Try to also understand how your customers behave. What are they looking for? What do they want to buy? What is the time of the month when you have more sales? All this information ensures smarter merchandise management.

If you work with perishable products, keep an eye on the expiration dates. Always keep in mind that you must deliver fresh products to your customer and that under no circumstances can he receive products that are close to winning. Periodically check your inventory and make sure that you will not lose merchandise by carelessness. It is also interesting to realize the products that have less output and create strategy for them to be sold.